Epitaph: A Novel of the O.K. Corral

Summary

Mary Doria Russell, the bestselling, award-winning author of The Sparrow, returns with Epitaph. An American Iliad, this richly detailed and meticulously researched historical novel continues the story she began in Doc, following Wyatt Earp and Doc Holliday to Tombstone, Arizona, and to the gunfight at the O.K. Corral.

A deeply divided nation. Vicious politics. A shamelessly partisan media. A president loathed by half the populace. Smuggling and gang warfare along the Mexican border. Armed citizens willing to stand their ground and take law into their own hands. . . .

That was America in 1881.

All those forces came to bear on the afternoon of October 26 when Doc Holliday and the Earp brothers faced off against the Clantons and the McLaurys in Tombstone, Arizona. It should have been a simple misdemeanor arrest. Thirty seconds and thirty bullets later, three officers were wounded and three citizens lay dead in the dirt.

Wyatt Earp was the last man standing, the only one unscathed. The lies began before the smoke cleared, but the gunfight at the O.K. Corral would soon become central to American beliefs about the Old West.

Epitaph tells Wyatt’s real story, unearthing the Homeric tragedy buried under 130 years of mythology, misrepresentation, and sheer indifference to fact. Epic and intimate, this novel gives voice to the real men and women whose lives were changed forever by those fatal thirty seconds in Tombstone. At its heart is the woman behind the myth: Josephine Sarah Marcus, who loved Wyatt Earp for forty-nine years and who carefully chipped away at the truth until she had crafted the heroic legend that would become the epitaph her husband deserved.

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Epitaph - Mary Doria Russell

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SING, GODDESS, OF RUINOUS WRATH!

—THE ILIAD OF HOMER

TO UNDERSTAND THE GUNFIGHT IN TOMBSTONE, stop—now—and watch a clock for thirty seconds. Listen to it tick while you try to imagine one half of a single minute so terrible it will pursue you all your life and far beyond the grave.

Begin your half minute with righteous confidence though you stand six paces from armed and angry men. They have abused you. They have threatened your life. Your rage and fear are justified. They are in the wrong. You are within the law. About all this, have no doubt.

Two quiet clicks. A breathless instant. The gunfire becomes deafening. When a sudden silence falls, just thirty seconds later, the life you thought was yours will be over.

Imagine. Your name is Earp or Holliday. Your name is Clanton or McLaury. Your name is Behan. Your name is Marcus or Sullivan, Houston or Harony. You were in the middle of the gunfight. You watched it, stunned. You heard the fusillade and thought, Dear God, not my man. Please, God. Not mine.

Whatever your name, it will be blackened.

Every flaw, every mistake held up for scrutiny, condemnation, ridicule. Your secrets made public. Your reputation twisted and sere as a blighted leaf. Every accomplishment, every act of kindness or courage forgotten. Everything you were, everything you hoped for, everything you planned . . . gone.

Whether you live another five minutes or another fifty years, those awful thirty seconds will become a private eclipse of the sun, darkening every moment left to you. You will be cursed with a kind of immortality. Year after year, everything that did and did not happen during those thirty seconds of confusion and noise, smoke and pain will be analyzed and described, distorted and disputed.

A century will pass, and decades more. Still, the living will haunt the dead as that half minute becomes entertainment for hundreds of millions around the world. Long after you die, you will be judged by those who cannot imagine standing six paces from armed and angry men.

Not even for thirty seconds.

FOR THE SAKE OF HELEN: PRINCESS, PRIZE

SINCE I WENT AWAY AND LEFT MY NATIVE LAND

YOU’RE RUSSIAN."

She looked over her shoulder.

He was thin-faced and bent a little to his left, but tall enough to spy on her over the swing doors that separated the Cosmopolitan Hotel’s busy lobby from its rarely used music room.

She swiveled on the piano stool and fixed him with a bleary, red-rimmed, adolescent glare. I’m as American as you are!

A slow smile. Leaning on a silver-topped walking stick, he stepped inside. Not ‘Russian,’ he said, enunciating more clearly. "You’re rushing."

Everything about the man seemed slightly askew. His smile, his posture, his demeanor. With an unhurried stateliness he came closer and handed her a handkerchief.

Blow your nose, sugar.

Resentfully, she did as she was told. Annoyed to be treated like a child. Aware that wiping snot on her sleeve was not a sophisticated alternative.

Without introducing himself, he placed his hat and walking stick on a small walnut table and sat in the wingback chair beside the piano, casually crossing one knobby knee over the other. Right hand only. And slow down.

Are you a piano teacher?

Never mind what I am. He took a slim dark cigar from a flat silver case and lit it with a few short, shallow puffs. First eight measures, he said through a cough. Right hand. Slowly.

It’s useless! I could play this last year, but I’ve forgotten everything. The music just looks like dots again!

Cigar at a jaunty angle, he leaned on his left elbow and settled into the upholstery. Just play, he said, lifting his chin toward the piano.

She got a note wrong in the second measure and banged on the keys. You see? I told you!

Six more attempts. Finally she got through eight measures with just a single muttered Drat, in the middle. Eyes bright, expecting praise, she turned toward him with juvenile elation.

Better, he acknowledged neutrally. "Now the left hand. Slowly."

She applied herself to the bass clef. He let her try three times, then placed his little cigar in a heavy crystal ashtray on the inlaid table. Sliding forward on the silk upholstery to the edge of his chair, he paused before getting to his feet. Despite his care, the movement set off an ugly coughing fit and he pulled a stack of clean cotton handkerchiefs from a pocket, selecting one to hold over his mouth. The others were returned from whence they came. When the episode passed, he put the used cloth in a different pocket. Each motion was practiced and nonchalant.

Let me show you something.

She got out of his way. He sat at the piano and played six notes, right hand only. That’s the refrain. You’ll hear those six notes again and again, but Mr. Schumann has varied what follows.

He demonstrated, playing plainly. Quarter notes, without pedal or dynamics. She tried to listen, but she was distracted by his hands. They were elegant but seemed too big for the rest of him. The prominent wrist bones were circled by fraying shirt cuffs so loose, she wondered if he was wearing a slightly larger and more prosperous man’s castoffs. The clothing was quietly tasteful but certainly not new.

Y’see? he asked. No need to rush . . . And there are those six notes again . . .

He played it all the way through explaining the structure and the harmonies. His voice was soft and his diction blurred, but his language was precise. The music had her attention now, becoming clearer with his comments. Then he paused and gathered himself, so self-contained she dared not speak for fear of breaking his concentration.

And this, he said gently, is the way my mamma taught me to play it. As though a child were sleepin’ in the very next room.

Silent, face still, he cut the tempo in half. His fingers did not so much strike the keys as caress them. Releasing the sound, not demanding it. If she had taken so long between each phrase, it would have been a sign that she simply hadn’t practiced. When he played, it was as though he knew just how long each note should linger in the ear and in the heart.

She had been weepy since the argument with Johnny. The music was so beautiful, and so beautifully performed. She sank back into the chair and began to cry again, though not as noiselessly as she hoped, for the gentleman heard the shuddering sniffle that escaped her.

Yes, it is more tender when you take your time, he said, as though it were the music alone and not her own self-pity that had brought her to tears. Mamma loved that piece, he said softly. My earliest memories of her are at the piano. Then, without warning, he rolled through a dazzling five-octave arpeggio. I have read about the Chickering grand, but this is the first one I have played. There is a little banjo in the tone, he observed, but it has a lovely touch. Now, here is something that ought to be done at full gallop!

He ripped into a sprightly sonata, his fingers dancing, the notes crisp and slyly joyous, as though he were sharing some private joke with the composer. She blew her nose again and began to cheer up. His hair was more ash than blond, but he was not as old as she’d first thought. Maybe only forty, she decided. Not very much older than Johnny Behan.

Johnny was almost thirty-eight, but still youthful and handsome. And, God! Those Irish eyes, those thick dark lashes! Still, the pianist had a good face. It was intelligent and refined, though lined, she thought—schooled in melodrama—by tragedy or suffering.

Having been caught blubbering like a baby, she suddenly felt it imperative to make this man see her as a woman. When he finished the piece, she cleared her throat and pitched her voice low to say with as much authority as an eighteen-year-old could muster, You’re a professional, aren’t you!

He smiled, but his hands never paused. He was playing a waltz now, the melody simple but pretty. Guilty as charged.

I knew it! Are you in Tombstone to give a concert?

Cards, sugar. I play cards for a livin’, not piano.

Then you’re wasting your talent, and that’s a crime. Honestly! You could be a concert pianist.

Another small smile. Amused, not flattered. "I am good, but not that good."

Well, you could play for the theater, at least. I know. I used to dance professionally, and let me tell you—you’re better than just good. Of course, my judgment is suspect. She lowered her voice and her eyes. I can be a fool for a musician.

His hands came off the keyboard, mid-measure, and he turned to look at her, his arched brows lifted high. Why, Mrs. Behan. Are you flirtin’ with me?

He knew who she was. And from the way he said Mrs. Behan, he knew what she was as well. Refusing to be ashamed, she manufactured a saucy grin, but the cut in her lip abbreviated the performance. She made her eyes sparkle instead, tilting her head in a way she knew to be provocative and alluring. She had seen it used to good effect by several actresses.

And what if I am? she asked, bold as brass.

Several hotel guests had tarried near the door to the lobby, listening to the music. Now that the gentleman had stopped playing, they went on about their business. A few blocks away, a steam whistle shrieked the shift change in Tombstone’s silver mines. For a moment, she was freshly aware of the ceaseless industrial noise out beyond Toughnut Street.

With slow care, the pianist rose and moved toward her, his slate-blue eyes resting steadily on her own. She blinked, uncertain about what she had just set in motion, for he was close now. Reaching toward her chin. Lifting it, studying her face with an unnerving, unwavering gaze. He smelled of soap and of tobacco. There was liquor on his breath, and the faint, sweet odor of decay. She thought that he might bend to kiss her on the lips. She decided that she would let him. Why not? she thought, lowering her lids, letting him come to her. It would serve Johnny right.

Her eyes snapped open and she pulled away when she realized that he was tracing with one finger—lightly, lightly—the bruise developing on her cheek. I— It was my fault, she stammered. I shouldn’t have— Johnny doesn’t usually . . .

The man stared, his face unmoving.

Honestly! It was my fault! she insisted. And she meant it. She knew that she’d embarrassed Johnny. She just wanted the house clean when Wyatt Earp came for lunch, but then somehow it turned into another fight about Albert, and she’d made a mess of everything. I’m unreasonable. I argue, and I always want my own way, and . . . She fell silent under the wordless scrutiny, the heat of shame rising in her face.

You have terrible taste in men, he told her. I am no prize, and I have friends who treat their livestock better than Mr. Behan treats you. He retrieved his hat and cane from the table. Raise your sights, sugar, he advised as he walked toward the door. Aim low? All you’ll hit are rats, snakes, and rock bottom.

She stood, furious, and considered throwing that crystal ashtray at his bony old spine, but he stopped, leaning on his cane, head down.

If you had the money, he asked, could you go home?

There was something about his voice. An unexpected kindness.

They think— I told them Johnny and I were married.

He snorted softly. My people think I am still a dentist. He straightened then, as much as he could. There will be fifty dollars deposited in your name at the front desk of this hotel. If you ever decide to leave that presumptuous, third-rate, overdressed Irish bigot, ask for the envelope, y’hear?

Mouth open, she watched him leave the music room. The swing doors creaked on their hinges. He stopped at the front desk for a brief conversation with Mr. Bilicke, the hotel owner, who glanced at her and nodded.

When the man was gone, Mr. Bilicke left the desk and pushed the swing doors to the music room aside. Do you know who that was? he asked.

She shook her head.

Doc Holliday, he told her.

She looked sharply toward the street, hoping to catch another glimpse of the notorious gambler Johnny had argued with yesterday, during the stagecoach journey the two men had shared. Johnny was fetching his eight-year-old son back to Tombstone to live. Holliday was, presumably, coming in from Tucson to play cards. He had a fearsome reputation, but Johnny Behan was convinced he could make friends with anyone. Things seemed to be going well until a short, sharp dispute erupted over the Non-Partisan Anti-Chinese League. All I did was invite him to join when he got to town, Johnny cried. I never heard a white man take on so about Chinks. He just tore into me, and with a little kid sitting right there! No consideration at all for Albert.

Johnny had been tedious on the subject, and he turned the conversation toward it whenever she tried to find out why on earth he expected her to raise his ex-wife’s child, just because Victoria was getting married again.

Mr. Bilicke spoke again: Word is, Holliday hates your . . . husband.

Always. That little hesitation. That tiny pause. Angry again, she was tempted to snap, Well, that makes two of us! but it would have sounded childish. Kwand meem!she said breezily in what she believed to be French. It’s all the same to me!

Mr. Bilicke shrugged and went back to the front desk. Soon he was busy with a guest’s query about telephone service to the silver mines. Just between the pits and the stamping mills, sir, but more wires are going up, and the Cosmopolitan is on the schedule for early ’81. Shall I arrange for a messenger in the meantime?

Their voices faded. Alone, homesick, overwhelmed by the shambles she’d made of her life, she began to cry again.

Oh, thank God! she heard Johnny cry. There you are!

He was standing in the doorway, his beautiful brown eyes moist with freshly relieved anxiety, that handsome open face a complex mixture of concern, dismay, and irritation. Coming close, he gripped her by the shoulders, lifting her to her feet, taking her in his arms.

Josie, honey, you can’t just wander around a town like this on your own. I’ve been worried sick.

I’m s-sorry, she wept, her head against his chest. Really, I am. It was all my fault—

THE STREETS OF TOMBSTONE WERE CROWDED, day and night. A thousand people must have seen them as he walked her back to the house. Soon the story would be all over town—Behan’s little filly got away from him again!—but he tried not to care. With an arm around her shoulders, John Harris Behan made his voice soft and urgent as they approached the door.

Just give Albert a chance, all right? Arguments scare him, honey. He’s been hard of hearing since he had the measles, so he can’t always make out the nice things people say to each other. He just hears what they say when they’re angry and upset. Which meant that Al had heard most of what Johnny Behan and Josie Marcus had said to each other since the boy arrived last night. Honest, Josie. Al’s a good kid. And none of this is his fault. He’s just a little boy.

Finally, she shrugged and looked away. It was assent if not enthusiasm. He was willing to settle for that.

I have to get back to town, he told her. There’s a meeting at the marshal’s office. But we’ll go someplace special tonight. Would you like that? How about a show? Or dancing, maybe. What d’you say? Let’s go dancing tonight!

She smiled, just a little, but when he kissed her, she kissed him back.

ALBERT WAS WAITING INSIDE, his little face pinched and pale. He must take after his mother, Josie thought, for she saw none of Johnny’s vigor in the child.

She had hardly closed the door when the boy asked, Are you going to be my stepmother? Before she said anything, he told her, I’ll ruin it.

It was more like a prediction than a threat. The boy sounded sad, not belligerent.

My real mother doesn’t like me anymore, Albert confided with the blaring voice that partly deaf people had. She got fat when she had me, so Dad stopped liking her. She’s getting a new husband, and she says I’d just ruin things again. She sent me to live with Dad so I’ll ruin things for him instead.

She stared at him, her mouth open. What kind of mother would say things like that to her own child? No wonder Johnny divorced her! Who’d stay with a woman like that?

Distracted by a sudden craving for something sweet, she opened a cupboard to see what she had on hand. Do you like cake, Albert? She looked over her shoulder. Of course, you do! Everybody likes cake.

He nodded but warily, not sure why she was asking.

Let’s bake a cake, she suggested. Which do you like better: chocolate or vanilla? Or molasses, maybe, with currants? I know a good recipe for that.

They settled on a marble cake and had a good time together. Assembling the ingredients, tasting the batter, managing the woodstove. Later they took turns with the whisk, beating the buttercream frosting until their arms ached.

They’d each had two big slices when Albert asked, Can I call you Mamma? Eyes on hers, waiting for her answer, the little boy licked a finger and pressed it onto the crumbs to carry every last morsel from his plate to his mouth.

She wanted fame. She wanted to travel the world. She wanted adventure and excitement, not a boring, ordinary life—that’s why she’d run away from home! Then she met Johnny Behan. He was dashing and handsome, important and prosperous. A man who might be governor or even president one day. For a while she was sure she wanted to be his wife, but now . . .

Albert was still waiting.

You have a mother, she reminded him.

I knew you wouldn’t like me, he said. Stoic. Resigned.

Of course I will! I like you already.

She didn’t quite mean it. Albert could see that, and his lonely skepticism made her warm to him.

All right, listen. You shouldn’t call me Mamma, but . . . She put her mouth close to his ear so he could hear her speak quietly. I have a secret name.

She reared back to see his reaction, which was wide-eyed.

You have to promise not to tell anybody, she said sternly. You can only use it when we’re alone together. Promise? He nodded. Once more she leaned in close to say a single word, then sat back with a conspiratorial smile.

Sadie, he whispered. I get to call you Sadie.

They were children, the two of them, without a tiresome adult to say, No more sweets! It’ll spoil your supper. So they celebrated with more cake.

An hour later, she was emotional again and frighteningly queasy. She’d begun wondering if the butter had gone off and was making her sick when a much worse possibility occurred to her. Unbidden, a dismal future rose up. A squalling baby. A sad little stepson. A thick waist. A husband who liked slender girls. Exactly the kind of dreary, domesticated life she’d fled.

Face in her hands, she began to cry again.

A LIFETIME LATER, when she was a stout old woman, all by herself for the first time in nearly fifty years, she would bury her face in one of Wyatt’s shirts and weep hour after hour. For Wyatt. For herself. For their blighted lives.

It was all gossip and slander and libel—newspapers calling Wyatt a killer, a cheat, a bunco man. And now he was gone, and she was the only one left to defend his good name. If only she could get Mr. Hart to make a movie about Wyatt! William S. Hart was a big star, and he admired Wyatt so. He could set the record straight.

My husband was a hero, she told the nice man who always visited on Sundays. None of it was his fault. Or mine either, she thought. All I did was love him. Never be sorry for loving someone, Albert.

I’m John Flood, the man reminded her, not Albert Behan.

Wiping her eyes, she snapped, Of course you’re not Albert. Albert’s only eight. I know that.

I’m sure you do, Mrs. Earp.

Mrs. Earp! she muttered, staring resentfully at ringless fingers. Then she shrugged. All the world’s a stage. That’s what dear Mr. Hart would say. You just have to learn your lines. I helped Wyatt learn his after the gunfight.

It’s not lying, she told Albert, or John, or whoever he was. It’s just pretending. That’s what Papa said.

A THOUSAND SHIPS

NOW, WHAT YOU GONNA TELL YOUR MUTTI?"

I was helping you at the bakery.

She was rewarded with fond eyes.

That’s my girl! her father declared. I can always count on my Sadie.

She wasn’t quite seven when they started sneaking off to the Brooklyn docks together. Her father never explained why Mutti shouldn’t know, except to say, "She got enough worries. Why give her tsuris?"

For a while, they stood with their backs against a warehouse wall, trying not to get in the way of swearing sailors and sweating stevedores. The docks were scary and exciting. There were rats and stray dogs. Hopeful new immigrants and hopeless old women with painted faces. Casks of stinking whale oil. Huge coils of rope almost as thick as her father’s arms, which were heavy with muscle that came from kneading big batches of dough.

Why not? her father decided. We go take a look. No harm in that. He scooped her into his arms, grunting, Oy, you getting big, and carried her out to the end of the central pier. There he turned slowly on his heel, Sadie clinging to him like an organ grinder’s monkey.

They were surrounded by ships tied up at the dock or anchored out in the harbor. More ships than she could count, though she’d recently counted all the way to fifty-three before she got bored and quit.

Look at all them masts! her father cried. Like a forest, eh, Sadie?

What’s a forest, Papa? She was a city child, after all.

You seen trees, right? Well, you gotta imagine places big as Brooklyn—bigger, even—with nothing but trees and trees and trees.

After her father explained it, she could sort of imagine a forest. Except rigging didn’t look a bit like leaves. Rigging looked like scribbles.

You want a good heavy ship for passage around the Horn, he told her as they started back along the pier. "Maybe you don’t want so big like the Roanoke there, but for sure you want bigger than the Germanic. Now, look at this one. He lifted his chin toward a middle-sized ship. She’s the Hosea Higgins. Ships is always she, even if they got a man’s name. Ja, for sure . . . The Hosea Higgins. That’s the ship you want for a voyage around the Horn."

She thought he meant a horn that you could blow until a few days later, when he took her to a store that sold used books. The owner knew her father and asked, How are you finding Mr. Darwin’s tale, Mr. Markuse?

Her father talked to the shopkeeper awhile. Then he asked to use the store’s globe so he could explain to Sadie about continents and how Cape Horn was a place down at the pointy end of South America.

"Now, here is Posen, back in Europe. Who knows what country? Sometimes Poland, sometimes Prussia. That’s where your mutti and me was born. And here is Brooklyn in North America, where Nathan and you and Hattie was born. With his finger, her father traced a line all over half the globe. This is the voyage of the Beagle. It sounded important, the way he said it. But a ship like the Higgins, she ain’t gonna go so far. She gonna go from Brooklyn here . . . south across the equator. Down the coast of Brazil and Argentina . . . around the Horn, then up-up-up past Chile . . . cross the equator again . . . up some more and then you step off in San Francisco. Four months, it takes. Well, six, maybe. If the weather is bad."

Twice more that week, they went back to watch the Higgins discharge her California cargo of wine, smoked salmon, and whale oil. When the ship began to take on westbound freight, her father scooped Sadie into his arms again. Why not? he said. We just go introduce ourselves.

The ship’s captain was bearded and gruff. This is no place for a child, sir! State your business!

Her father set Sadie down on the Higgins’s deck and approached the captain alone. A few minutes later, he beckoned Sadie to come closer. Captain, he said, I like to introduce you my daughter, Josephine Sarah. Sadie, say hello to the captain.

She dropped a little curtsy like a girl she saw in a penny play once. I am very pleased to meet you, sir.

The captain’s eyes widened and warmed. A smile lifted his beard.

I did that, she thought. I made him nicer.

The two men moved off a few steps, speaking in low tones again. She craned her neck to watch the sailors up in the rigging and discovered that they were looking down at her, for little girls were rare as rubies in their world and Sadie was an arresting child: small, neat-bodied, with pale white skin and curly black hair and dark brown eyes, her new front teeth coming in nicely. She curtsied to each of the sailors, one after another, turning all around, until she staggered a little, dizzy. And the sailors didn’t just smile. They clapped for her and nudged each other and cheered.

She was glad when her father took her back to the Higgins the next day.

Our secret, he reminded her. Mutti don’t gotta know. Just you and your old papa, eh?

This time she had to hang on to the hem of his coat. He couldn’t hold her hand because he was carrying big stacked trays loaded with samples. Rye, pumpernickel, and soft white bread. Yeast rolls and three kinds of muffins. Cream puffs. Almond macaroons. Crisp strudel. Seven-layer tortes.

This bounty was presented to the captain of the Higgins, who shared it with his officers. Grinning, their lips white with powdered sugar, they moaned their admiration for Hyman Markuse’s excellence as a baker. Their eyes ate Sadie up, too.

When the trays were empty, nested and tucked under one arm, her father took her hand and they walked, bent-kneed, back down the gangplank.

Now, what you gonna tell Mutti? he asked.

We took samples to a new customer. She felt special to be trusted.

Good girl. Gotta keep the story straight! he declared. Always easier when the story’s true . . .

IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME they’d skipped out.

Silently, Sophie Markuse bundled her three children against the January cold and hustled them down the narrow tenement stairs. Nathan was the oldest and he was used to it, but even little Hattie knew what it meant when their mother woke the children before dawn. You had to be very quiet, so as not to alert the landlord. And it wouldn’t do to wake the Irish boarder, who was sleeping off a drunk on the kitchen floor. He paid for meals in advance and would want his money back.

Hy already had their bags loaded on a wagon waiting at the end of the block, where the rumble of wooden wheels and the squeal of rusty axles wouldn’t give the family away. It wasn’t until the driver pulled up by the wharves that Sophie realized this was no ordinary flight from overdue rent.

Nayn, Chayim! Nayn! Ich vil nit gayen!

English, Sophie! We’re Americans now! Don’t worry, everything gonna be fine, her husband said, mixing encouragement with urgency as he coaxed her off the wagon. "Don’t make a tzimmes out of it. You gonna upset the children—"

"I’m gonna upset them? Me? I’m the one who’s dragging them off to the end of the earth? Nayn, Chayim! Nayn!"

In the end, Hyman Markuse gave up arguing and simply pulled his weeping wife toward the Hosea Higgins. The three children followed like ducklings, their breath forming little white clouds in the first pink light of day.

A busy crew was making ready to leave port. Mr. Marcus, take your family to your cabin! the captain shouted. Pointing at two of the least soused sailors, he ordered, You and you, stow their bags below!

Looking up at his father, Nathan asked, "Mr. Marcus?"

I gonna explain later, Hy promised. The cabin’s very cozy, Sophie. You gonna see. Everything gonna be all right.

Eyes closed, Sophie was shaking her head—no, no, no—but she cried out in fright when a sailor stumbled against her, dropped two valises, and apologized with the glassy-eyed solemnity of a drunk trying very hard to show how sober he is.

You promised me, Chayim! she wailed as her husband guided her into the bowels of the ship. You promised! I told you I don’t wanna go!

Sadie tried to take her little sister’s hand, but Hattie wouldn’t let her.

WITH HIS FAMILY ASSEMBLED in their dark little cabin, Hyman Markuse lined the children up in front of the berth they were to share—packed head to toe, like tinned sardines—for the next 158 nights.

Nathan, eleven, was the reason Hy had offered to marry Sophie. She might have hoped to do better than a Brooklyn baker, but at twenty-seven, her chances were dwindling, and with a baby on the way, Hyman Markuse was better than no husband at all. A miscarriage was next, and a stillbirth followed: tragedy piled on irony. When Sadie finally came along, it seemed a miracle. Doll-like and beautiful, she took Hy’s breath away. You spoil her, Chayim, his wife always said, and that was true. He could deny Sadie nothing, for she was lively and demanding, a terror when thwarted and adorable when indulged. Hattie was next. Her mother’s daughter. A dour little soul, wary and mistrustful. Glaring at him now, as if daring her father to speak the truth.

Children, he announced, "today we leave for to seek our fortune in the West! We gonna sail round the Horn to a new home in San Francisco, and our passage is paid, complete, ’cause I gonna be the ship’s cook. From this day, our family name gonna be Marcus. We gonna have a new American home in a new American city, and we gonna have new American names when we get there."

Nathan made a noise with his lips and left the cabin.

Just like your father! Sophie called after him. Leave! That’s the solution to everything! Red eyes cold with judgment, Sophie declared, You oughta be ashamed, Chay.

It’s Henry now, and I told you, I gonna pay your brother back.

Teaching your own children to lie!

Whose business is it, we change our name a little bit? You changed your name when you married me. Was that a lie?

SEVENTY YEARS LATER, long after memories of Wyatt Earp and Johnny Behan had faded and died, Sadie Marcus could still recall that childhood voyage in moments of crisp clarity.

Her miserable mother dashing across the deck to vomit over the side while seabirds hovered and dove and squabbled for the results.

Her cheerful father’s face shining with excitement as he told about a galley fire quickly doused with soup.

The endless Brazilian forest with its uncountable tree trunks—like the masts in Brooklyn harbor!

Whales, rising and falling in vast mounds.

Hordes of seals, sunning on rocks.

Penguins were the best of all, formally dressed for a party that could begin only after they waddled to the edge of the rocks and tumbled into the ocean.

You see, Sadie? her father said, lifting a hand toward those awkward, comical birds as they flew through the gray-green water, fiercely graceful and suddenly swift. "Everything changes when you are in your proper element. That’s what your mutti don’t understand."

Sadie stood tiptoe on a roll of canvas, resting her forearms on the rail the way her father did. She was fascinated by his hands and wrists, crisscrossed by shiny pink brands burned into his skin by baking sheets and kettles and ovens.

"Your mutti, she wishes we stayed in Brooklyn, he said. But in America? You can start over. You can change where you live. Change what you do. Change your name even! In America, you just gotta find your proper element and you will succeed."

She was shivering beneath layers of flannel and knitting. Her lips felt thick from the cold, and her face was chapped by wind that had started its own journey in the Antarctic. It was worth mere discomfort to stand at her father’s side, listening to his brave words.

"Your mutti gonna see. We gonna buy a nice little building on a corner. Corners is always good for a bakery. We gonna live upstairs, and we ain’t gonna need no drunk Irishman to share the rent. No more boss who takes the profit! We gonna offer fine pastries and cakes, not just bread and rolls. Lotta money in San Francisco. Lotta rich people gonna want me to cater their parties . . . She’ll see. Everything gonna be fine!"

And it truly was, for a while at least.

RUIN IS STRONG AND SWIFT

SAN FRANCISCO.

It was newer, bigger, brasher, noisier than Brooklyn. San Francisco was willing to give anyone a second or third or fourth chance, and immigrants from around the globe were taking the town up on its offer. Chileans and Chinamen. Bengalis and Brazilians. Jews from all over Europe. Ex-convicts from Australia, ex-Confederates from Mississippi, ex-slaves from Georgia. Mohawks from New York, Cherokees from Oklahoma. Huge Hawaiian laborers, dapper Italian musicians, suave French thieves. Educated or illiterate, dirt-poor or well-capitalized, respectable or on the run—everyone in San Francisco had come for one reason only: to make a fortune in the foggy, chilly city that had mushroomed into existence on top of a boomtown’s mud and dung.

When the Marcus family arrived in 1868, the bay was jammed with shipping, and the dockside warehouses were as full as the brothels. New buildings climbed up and over the hills, straining to accommodate a quarter million ambitious men and a few thousand very tired women. Swells with money swanned around town in top hats, frock coats, striped pants, and brocade vests, shoes buffed to a mirror shine twice daily by bootblacks who earned a very decent living from the filthy streets. Watching this swaggering peacock parade, the former Hyman Markuse suspected that every man in town was running from a fuming brother-in-law, or a forlorn fiancée, or a cheated business partner somewhere back in Argentina, or Scotland, or South Africa. But what did that matter? In San Fransisco, anyone could leave a disappointing past behind and get rich.

There were, by then, more than a hundred bakeries in town, but after two decades of sourdough, the city was ravenous for soft white bread, elaborate cakes, and fancy pastries. With his pay from the Hosea Higgins, Henry Marcus bought a used oven, jammed it into a tiny shack, and sent the kids out with a pushcart to sell pastries. Sophie was mortified and fretted about the children’s safety, but nobody came to grief and cash began to accumulate. After six months, he was able to rent a storefront. Sales doubled.

Half a year later, he took a mortgage on a corner lot and built a fine two-story building, just as he had planned. Like Mr. and Mrs. Marcus themselves, the apartment above the bakery steadily gained bourgeois weight, its rooms filling with heavy furniture, the upholstery well-stuffed, the wood deeply carved. To Henry’s immense satisfaction, Sophie’s attitude toward their newest home softened along with her widening hips. She loved shopping and not for nothing was San Francisco called the Emporium of the Pacific! Henry took pleasure in his wife’s pleasure, never complaining about the expense. Hattie didn’t care about clothes, but Sadie! She grew more beautiful by the year, and it was a joy to see what a princess she was becoming. What did it matter if all those pretty shoes and ribbon-trimmed skirts were ruined by San Francisco’s mud? The girls were growing. Sophie got plumper every year. They always needed new.

For Henry himself, success meant buying great stacks of books and magazines and newspapers, though he often fell asleep before reading very long. He had to be up well before dawn to make sure that Nathan had the ovens going because . . . Well, admittedly: Nathan was a disappointment. He didn’t like working at the bakery but couldn’t seem to hold a job anywhere else. He’d come home complaining that he’d been cheated or ill-treated by his boss. After a few weeks, he’d quit in a huff and then mope around the apartment until his mother’s nagging became more tedious than looking for a job.

Even so, Henry didn’t worry. He was making enough to support them all and even sent money to relatives in Posen—until everything went bust in the Panic of 1873.

GOOD TIMES NEVER LAST, but hard times always end. That was Henry’s motto in the early days of the depression. The Marcus bakery remained solvent longer than many more impressive businesses, for there are times when man does live by bread alone. There’s always a market for a baker’s basics, even if his customers wait until the end of the day to save pennies on stale loaves.

We gonna be all right? Sophie asked whenever she heard of another local business going under.

Sure! Everything gonna be fine! Henry would say, and then he’d send her and Sadie out shopping, so they wouldn’t worry.

By the end of 1875, Henry had laid off all the help. Alone in the shop, he worked the ovens, the counter, the till, the supply room. Too tired to collect due bills, he got into trouble when he failed to pay his own.

Only dour and wary young Hattie saw growing exhaustion beneath her father’s resolute cheer. One morning, she got out of bed when her father did—before daybreak—and went downstairs with him.

What about school? he asked.

I can read and write, she said, tying on an apron that went around her twice. I can add and subtract. What else do I need?

Before long, he stopped thinking of her as a child. Even when Hattie was small, she had seemed older than Sadie. Now, plain-faced and flat-chested at thirteen, Hattie was everything her beautiful sister didn’t need to be: realistic, practical, good with numbers. Give that girl a ledger and she would follow a dime to hell.

When the bakery ran out of flour one morning, Hattie set herself to cleaning up the books. She was determined to figure out how much they owed the mill and why they’d gotten behind on paying for this essential.

Is this everything? she asked, waving at the papers stacked in neat, grim piles on the desk. No other bills? No money hidden somewhere?

That’s all of it, her father said.

She stared.

I swear! he cried. That’s everything!

Well, we aren’t bankrupt yet but we’ll be lucky to make the mortgage payment this month, Papa.

Don’t sell, she said. Not yet, anyway. I wish I’d known sooner, but now that I do . . . She looked him in the eye. "You can’t spend anything without my permission, Papa. You can’t say yes just because Sadie pouts. And Nathan has to find work. He brings in money or he moves out."

He has a job! He works here.

Now and then, she admitted dryly. Papa, he’s lazy and unreliable. He eats like a horse and drinks like a fish. Would you hire him if he weren’t your son? His hesitation was her answer, and she nodded tightly. You want to fire him or shall I?

All right! Henry cried. Do what you gotta do. Just—please!—don’t tell your mother.

NATHAN WAS GIVEN TWO DAYS before he’d be kicked out of the house. When he protested, Hattie told him, "You pay room and board or you move out. And if you go crying to Mutti, I’ll tell her about that shiksa you’re seeing. Just to be sure Nate wasn’t holding out on the family, Hattie followed him to whatever odd jobs he got after that. I will pick up his wages," she informed the fools who were willing to hire her brother, and there was something so implacable about that skinny, hard-eyed girl that his bosses handed over the cash.

Sadie moaned and complained about getting up early to help with the baking before school, but Hattie was not above using guilt as a bludgeon. The Crash hurt the business. Papa can’t afford to pay assistants. You want him to die of apoplexy, he’s working so hard?

Give Sadie her due. She’d always been good in the kitchen and had a real flair for the fancier baking. No one who shopped at the Marcus bakery was giving lavish receptions anymore, but a plate of pretty petits fours and iced bonbons could make an afternoon tea more special. Sadie loved decorating the little cakes, but she really shone behind the counter after school, flirting shamelessly with the customers, bringing in mobs of moonstruck admirers. I was thinking of you when I made these crullers, she’d whisper to a goggle-eyed young man, who’d buy a dozen. Dark eyes flashing, she’d lean over the counter and offer a tiny sample of a torte she’d made. Here, she’d say. Try this and tell me what you think. The whole torte would sell.

That’s my Sadie, Henry would say. She got them eating out of her hand!

Idiots, Hattie would mutter, but even she liked what Sadie did for the bottom line.

SLOWLY, IN FITS AND STARTS, the economy improved. By 1877, Hattie’s ferocious economizing and strict management had placed the business on a solid cash basis. The threat of bankruptcy receded.

If Mrs. Henry Marcus had been kept strictly ignorant of how and why this had been achieved, she was correct in surmising that Henry’s mood and outlook had improved. Which is why she thought it was perfectly reasonable to make a completely ridiculous suggestion on a chilly night in 1878, when she and her husband were getting ready for bed.

We should buy the girls a piano.

One shoe on, one shoe off, Henry stared. Sophie was as round and sleek as a sea lion under the covers, but her voice was firm with the sort of resolution that every married man recognizes and dreads.

"If Sadie gonna get a husband, she gotta get some accomplishments, Henry."

San Francisco’s men still outnumbered its women a hundred to one. In Henry’s observation, all a female needed to get a husband were two of those and one of the other. Four limbs? Desirable, maybe. Not required.

Stalling, he toed off the second shoe and bent over to pull off his stockings.

I had a piano, Sophie reminded him coyly, and such a husband I got!

Wasn’t music got you a husband, Henry thought, but he’d have yanked his own tongue out with pliers before he said as much.

Both girls should take lessons, Sophie persisted. Hattie, she gotta get some graces or she never gonna get married. You treat her like a son, Henry.

He slid into bed beside her and made a grave tactical error. And how you think we gonna get a piano up them stairs?

Sophie had clearly thought this through. Sitting up, she warmed to her topic, which involved blocks and tackles and windows, and what several ladies at the synagogue had done for their daughters in similar circumstances.

I’m not listening! Henry warned, but the very fact that she’d raised this bizarre notion was oddly comforting, so he let her rattle on, thinking all the while, She don’t know. Thanks, Gott! Hattie didn’t tell her!

Sophie, he said finally, turning down the light and speaking the truth, the last thing in the world this family needs is a piano.

DORA’S MOTHER INVITED ME and Hattie to a concert! Sadie announced at dinner a few nights later. Dora Hirsch was Sadie’s best friend at school.

A piano concert? Sophie asked innocently. As if she hadn’t already talked to Mrs. Hirsch about this. And who is playing?

"We’re to be Mrs. Hirsch’s guests, Sadie said primly. She made a face at Hattie. ‘Guest’ means she pays, we don’t, idiot."

Sadie! their mother said sharply. Don’t call names.

Can’t beat the price, their father admitted. All right. Why not?

I’ll tell you why not, Hattie said. Mrs. Hirsch is a piano teacher, and there’s no such thing as a free sample. She’s fishing for students.

So, good! Sophie said, passing kugel to her husband. We got two students for her. I told you, Henry. The girls need to play piano so they can get husbands.

I’m not getting married, Sadie declared, just to stir things up. I’m going to be an emancipated woman. I’m going to ride a bicycle. And vote.

And how are you going to make a living? Hattie inquired. You think Papa is going to support you while you’re out voting and being emancipated?

"It would be a mitzvah for the girls to take lessons, Sophie pointed out. Evelyn Hirsch is a widow. She needs the money. She waited a moment before adding piously, Maimonides says the highest form of charity is to help that someone should make a honest, good living."

Henry glanced at Hattie.

She looked at him narrow-eyed, then shrugged. Fine, she said. It’s on your head, she meant.

They can go to the concert, Henry told his wife, but that’s all.

SO SADIE AND HATTIE MARCUS accompanied Mrs. Hirsch and Dora to some lady’s piano recital a few nights later. And to her mother’s delight, Sadie came home simply dying to take piano lessons.

Everything about the recital had thrilled her. That dress! Ivory satin, gleaming in the limelight. The lady’s hair! Sweeping smoothly upward, adorned with tiny flowers and pearls. Her creamy shoulders. Those jeweled bracelets flashing as her hands moved. The rapt attention of the audience, all eyes on the performer. The waves of applause! With the sudden, certain emotion of adolescence, Josephine Sarah Marcus became unalterably determined to tour the world as a concert pianist. New York, Paris, London—they were out there, waiting for her!

All she needed was a piano.

Everything might have turned out differently if Henry Marcus had simply told her, We can’t afford it, but he had never been able to say no to Sadie. What he said instead was I don’t got time to shop for a piano.

Big mistake.

For the next week, whenever he sat down, Sadie pounced, and it was Can we look for a piano this afternoon, Papa? He came up with excuses. He was making inquiries, he told her. A customer thought she might be willing to sell him her piano. Two days later: The lady changed her mind. That kind of thing.

But Sadie wouldn’t let it go. Her whole future depended on this. Her father was cruel and neglectful. He obviously hated her. Well, she hated him. If she could not have a piano, she did not want